Perhaps that’s how we’ve managed to keep making the show for so long without viewers growing weary of it.” “We’ve been doing this for decades, but there hasn’t been one errand that looked the same as any of the others. “Sometimes their errand ends up taking quite a long time. “Even children we expect to come home quickly start doing something else that we find astonishing,” Ouchi says. The children are the undisputed stars of the show, thanks both to their successes and their capacity for the unpredictable – a wrong turn, an impromptu conversation or an overly ponderous visit to the shops. “That is a major theme of the show, and we believe it is one of the reasons that throughout its long history, it has won the support of viewers across all generations. “By filming the children on their first errands, we are documenting an aspect of contemporary Japan at any given point in time,” Ouchi says. Old Enough first appeared as Japan’s asset-inflated “bubble economy” was about to make way for decades of stagnation, and just as the country started to grapple with rural depopulation and the erosion of the traditional family unit, with several generations living under the same roof. The format has been untouched for 30 years, but each series captures subtle changes in Japanese society and family dynamics. Its success in Japan, where it still attracts huge audiences, is proof that the warning to never work with children or animals may only be half right. The Nippon TV series, a staple of Japanese television since it first aired as Hajimete no Otsukai or My First Errand in 1991, has acquired a cast of thousands of families. To this day, we just focus on recording those first errand moments and one out of every six to 10 gets aired.” “We started conducting simulations and learned that for every 10 errands we shoot, about one will be television material. What viewers don’t see are the errands that don’t work out, although Ouchi says he prefers not to describe them as failures. Our hope is to document that tradition before it gradually disappears.” “Family situations have changed drastically over the 30-plus years since we started this … but the tradition of sending children on errands remains. “Perhaps we might find something in the footage that’s worthy of television. “I thought, what if we film a child when they’re sent on their very first errand, without them being aware of what we’re doing?” he says. Still the programme’s executive director, he said he was inspired by the widely accepted practice among Japanese parents of asking their children to run errands alone. The show’s creator, Junji Ouchi, says the show continues to draw in audiences because it centres on a treasured feature of Japanese family life. In another, Hinako, who is just shy of five, is tasked with giving a handmade hara-obi or traditional maternity belt to a pregnant neighbour before buying wakame, an edible seaweed, and picking onions and cabbage from the family allotment.ĭuring an errand to the local market, three-year-old Yuka buys udon noodles and tempura, but returns with sea bream instead of the prawns her mother had requested. In one episode, Hiroki, a two-year-old boy, navigates traffic on a 20-minute journey to the shop to buy flowers, curry and fishcakes for his mother. The tasks set in the programme reflect errands Japanese children carry out in real life, although for every rural family happy to send their four-year-old to the corner shop is another in Tokyo that would shudder at the thought of exposing their offspring to the potential dangers of busy urban streets. Old Enough is the most wholesome show you’ve ever seen - in this unscripted series, Japanese toddlers (ages 2-5) are sent on simple errands to help their parents and the results are just so pure.Ģ0 episodes are now on Netflix.
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